That might be the case, but I doubt it. However you can check it find out!
Take your laptop for a stroll. Plonk it down somewhere in the near vicinity of this tower (anywhere that you are positive will give you a really good signal), and try it there. If you then get a good uplink bitrate, all of this is worth thinking about. If you get the same old slow pokey rate, it ain't gonna do us any good to worry about how you connect!
I'm not familiar with that particular router.
Some will do it, some won't. What you want to look for is something like "Client Mode", as opposed to "Access Point Mode". To work as a router with wifi access it has to be an Access Point, and might very well have no way to switch it to act as a Client.
The various WRT54G(S) models from Linksys will do it *if* you upload one of the various third party firmware packages.
It is also possible that some brand of repeater will work too. But since they tend to work only with AP of the same brand, without knowing what model the AP is, it's a real crap shoot to try repeaters.